Readings: Rv 7:2-4, 9-1; Ps 24; 1 Jn 3:1-3; Mt 5:1-12
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Good
evening, all you saints in training!
"Who are these wearing white robes, and where
did they come from?" [Rv 7:13]
I’ve
always loved this verse from the Book of Revelation. This might sound odd, but whenever I read it, I can’t help but think of a
line from the movie, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, when Cassidy, the
outlaw, speaking of the posse tracking them so successfully, asks, “Who are
those guys?” It’s really what was asked of John when he encountered that
crowd in his heavenly vision: Who are these people?
Who
are these saints? Where did they come from? How did they manage to live in this
weird world of ours and yet live such holy lives? Yes, it’s these people and
their lives of heroic virtue, these saints, that we celebrate at this vigil
Mass of the Solemnity of All Saints.
Some
years ago, during the canonization ceremony of Popes John XXIII and John Paul
II, I heard a news anchor say, “Today the Catholic Church made two saints and
let them enter heaven.” What an odd thing to say. Of course, he was wrong,
terribly wrong, and provided another good reason to ignore what the secular media say about the Church. In truth, the Church doesn’t make saints. God makes them. All the Church
does is recognize a few of the saints God has made.
Perhaps
more importantly, the canonization of a saint doesn’t get them through heaven’s
gates. Indeed, canonization does absolutely nothing for the saint, who is
already with God. No, the Church canonizes saints for us, for by doing so she
hopes to inspire you and me to strive for the holiness that is our true
destiny. This is why the Church chants the Litany of the Saints at its most
solemn liturgical celebrations. That Litany is the roster of the Church’s Hall
of Fame, its family album, the names of those who form that “great cloud of witnesses” so eloquently
described in the Letter to the Hebrews [Heb 12:1].
One
of my theology professors at Georgetown, who taught me the New Testament 60 years
ago, was a priest who had spent years in a Communist Chinese prison. Once,
while speaking of St. Peter, a man filled with doubts and fears and so often
lacking in faith, this saintly Jesuit said, “All saints are sinners, but not
all sinners are saints.”
The
difference, he went on to tell us, is that the saints recognize, understand,
and repent of their sinfulness because they accepted God’s grace and recognize
the Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. More than anything else they desire union with
Jesus Christ and so they struggle mightily in the lifelong process of
conversion that God offers us all. The others, he said, not only don’t
recognize the Son, but too often don’t even recognize their sinfulness for what
it is. And that, he believed, was an eternal sadness.
Yes,
brothers and sisters, we are all called to be saints, to be one with Jesus Christ.
Even now, in this life, we’re united with the Communion of Saints, a part of
All Saints, Christ’s Mystical Body, the People of God.
By our baptism
we were sanctified, made holy, deep down, in grace – no longer banished,
disaffected children, outside God’s family. In Baptism we become part of the
in-crowd. Even though we’re sinners, as John reminds us, we’re still God’s
children, adopted children of the Father. John continued, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed…But we shall be like Him” [1 Jn 3:2].
Yes, there’s so much we don’t know. Our vison is blurred by the mystic’s “cloud
of unknowing,” until clarity comes when we rise with Jesus Christ. In the meantime,
we move in the world – not just the world of good, of God’s creative act, but
the world of a fallen race, the world that won’t recognize us because it won’t recognize
Jesus Christ [1 Jn 3:1]. It’s a world that tries to extinguish the light
of Christ, to drown out the Gospel with a cacophony of meaningless noise. It’s
a world that ignores All Saints Day, preferring instead Halloween, All Hallows
Eve, by celebrating the craziness of our world.
But
God continues to raise up saints, and He wants each one of us to be among them;
so, He gives us a guidebook, a map, to help us find our way to His Way. Jesus’ Sermon
on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel distills the essence of His teachings. And it
opens with the Beatitudes, the essence of the essence.
But
that’s not what the Beatitudes are. They’re not items in a cafeteria from which
we can pick and choose what we like, while ignoring the rest. They’re really a
manifesto for the complete, normal Christian life. Christ opens to us eight avenues through
which we will find the fullness of blessing. To be blessed means to find
wholeness, joy, well-being – to experience the true peace of Christ. To be fully
blessed is to depend solely on God.
With
that we come to recognize our own spiritual poverty, the insignificance of all
we thought was so important. And when we cry out to God, fearful, hopeful,
thankful, He sends His Spirit to show us the way. In sorrow, not only for our
own sin but the sins and injustices of the world, we encounter the deep,
abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.
Mourning
our dead, praying for their salvation, we cast our prayers into eternity
knowing that “with God all things are possible.” God blesses us with
wisdom and compassion as we carry God’s love to others.
Called
to be meek, not weak, we walk with a humility that recognizes Jesus Christ in
everyone we meet, reminding us that we are called to love. We move, not filled
with vengeful anger, but as living signs of God’s mercy.
Through
prayer we experience the shock of humility, a rightness in our relationship
with God, with each other, and with creation. True humility is merely the acceptance
of reality, that we are all completely dependent on God. Humility is to
recognize God’s
divine life in others, and the need to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself.
I remember a story about a young mother who was
trying to help her little boy understand God’s great commandment. “God put us
here to help others,” she told him. He thought for a moment and then asked,
“What are the others here for?” The little lad would
have made a good Pharisee.
Yes,
we’re called by Jesus to extend to each other the same mercy we expect from Him.
At the soup kitchen
we had a saying, “We don’t serve food, we serve Jesus Christ.” But do we open
ourselves wide so that all who walk in that door, see Jesus in us?
As
we long and work for peace in our lives, our merciful God rests His hand gently
upon our heads and speaks to us as His favored children. Having received a
sevenfold blessing, seized by the Holy Spirit, taken captive, we allow
ourselves to receive an eighth blessing, to be emptied and enter into the
perfection of Christ.
Then,
being like Christ, we’re not surprised when called to share in the likeness of
his suffering and death. For we, too, will carry our cross knowing always that
Jesus walks by our side. Perhaps, then, someone will look at us and ask, “Who
are they who seem to love so much?”
And
for this, like the Saints we honor today, we will be greatly blessed.
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